Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Free Power



TECHNO THRILLS                               


thorium




 If your car was powered by thorium, you would never need to refuel it. The vehicle would burn out long before the chemical did. The thorium would last so long, in fact, it would probably outlive you.

That’s why a company called Laser Power Systems has created a concept for a thorium-powered car engine. The element is radioactive, and the team uses bits of it to build a laserbeam that heats water, produces steam, and powers an energy-producing turbine.

Thorium is one of the most dense materials on the planet. A small sample of it packs 20 million times more energy than a similarly-sized sample of coal, making it an ideal energy source.

The thing is, Dr. Charles Stevens, the CEO of Laser Power Systems, told Mashable that thorium engines won’t be in cars anytime soon.

“Cars are not our primary interest,” Stevens said. ”The automakers don’t want to buy them.”

He said too much of the automobile industry is focused on making money off of gas engines, and it will take at least a couple decades for thorium technology to be used enough in other industries that vehicle manufacturers will begin to consider revamping the way they think about engines.

“We’re building this to power the rest of the world,” Stevens said. He believes a thorium turbine about the size of an air conditioning unit could more provide cheap power for whole restaurants, hotels, office buildings, even small towns in areas of the world without electricity. At some point, thorium could power individual homes.

Stevens understands that people may be wary of Thorium because it is radioactive — but any such worry would be unfounded.

“The radiation that we develop off of one of these things can be shielded by a single sheet off of aluminum foil,” Stevens said.” ”You will get more radiation from one of those dental X-rays than this.”

Source:

Mashable


Back in the day I was one of a billion kids who built this model of the yet to be launched nuclear submarine Nautilus. Memory says it was a Revell kit, but evidently not.  I also have a vague remembrance of a controversy over how the model maker was able to get the very accurate exterior plans of this top secret boat, but can't find any supporting documents.  But that's not what  I'm writing about.

The peaceful use of atomic power was a very big deal  in the 1950s.   One of the more promising predictions was that  nuclear powered electricity would become a virtually free commodity.  Woot-Woo! People believed it.  Were we naive back then, or what?

 Think of the geopolitical consequences if, today, you discovered that adding a cup of sand,  ½ oz. of urine, and some eye of newt to a thousand gallons of seawater would produce1000 gallons 98 Octane gasoline. If you were foolish enough to demonstrate the finished product—without divulging the formula—I suspect you'd be lucky to make it to the weekend before succumbing to a sudden heart attack, or freak boating accident. 

So, even if a  thorium-powered car engine proved to be safe and doable, guess what?  Won't happen. For one thing, the Arab's power and influence would revert back to the 18th century model.  The world economy would convulse.  So, if you ever find some successful alchemy that replaces a need for oil, release the formula before the Feds can find a way to tax it (no way,  that) stop it.  


9 comments:

Anonymous said...

"small pieces of thorium ... were positioned to create a thorium laser. The lasers heat water to produce steam and power a series of mini-turbines."

This is total snake oil - a con job.

Lasers take power to run, they aren't power producing devices; they only convert some other form of energy (other photons, in the earliest lasers) to coherent photons of roughly equal total energy to that which was put in (the difference is the usual thermodynamic losses, and shows up as heat).

"just one gram of thorium produces more energy than 28,000 litres of petrol. Mr Stevens says just eight grams of thorium would be enough to power a vehicle for its entire life"

This is only true if you're converting mass to energy (i.e. some sort of atomic power).

I don't know the isotope mixture of 'common' thorium, or their half-lives, or the mass lost in fission when they decay, but I doubt 8 grammes of thorium produces enough energy from natural radioactive decay to power a car (any more than 8 grammes of, say, uranium would).

So he's basically insinuating he has found some other way to do mass->energy conversion to get more power out of it - which is, like I said, total snake oil.

"If it were that simple though, petrol would already be a thing of the past."

Well, at least the writer has some level of suspicion that this is total BS.

.

Anonymous said...

Lots of thorium on the Indian subcontinent and they are exploring it's use for generating electricity. It's apparently safer & produces less radioactive waste than a uranium based reactor.

ignore amos

leelu said...

Back then (mid-last-century) it was a Revell kit. The Lindberg guys are newcomers.

Rodger the Real King of France said...

Thanks, I was only able to find a Revell model for Nautilus II.

Nelson said...

The first anon post is somewhat BS. Sure, a "thorium-powered laser" would be pretty ridiculous, but also totally unnecessary. Thorium produces enough heat on its own to generate the steam directly. A few years ago, I think on barking-moonbat.com, I read about a thorium salt reactor which could be the size of a shipping container and generate the power for a medium-sized suburb, for 25 years. When the fuel runs out, just replace the shipping container. Chain multiple reactors together for redundancy and to power larger cities. Thorium is self-regulating; if the reaction starts to get out of hand and overheats, the heat will kill neutron production, thus maintaining control of the reactor.

The best thing is that the thorium reactor was one of the earliest types designed for electrical power generation, so it's already approved by various regulatory agencies and units can be built at any time.

I would think that a smaller amount of thorium would certainly be able to power an automobile, even a plug-in car which could power a house if city power went down.

Ole Phat Stu said...

And if the car has an accident?
It pollutes that piece of road which has to be shut for 5 halflives (10^11 years). A few of those and the road network fails...

Jess said...

If it's in Jersey, who cares?

Anonymous said...

Well, I care if it's in Jersey, for one. Where do I send money to contribute?

BlogDog said...

Karl Denninger over on Market-Ticker.org has repeatedly posted about the use of LFTR (liquid fueled thorium reactors) as the best bet for energy prodection. Thorium is cheaply available in coal but not even in the coal that needs to be dug: it's in the coal ash of coal that's already been "used." And the reactors could be used to produce energy to recombine hydrocarbons in the atmosphere to make gasoline so in a way we can have "nuclear powered" cars.

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